


stay awake, for you do not know the day nor the hour

by silverhedges



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16443857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverhedges/pseuds/silverhedges
Summary: Sabrina has never been something to be kept, which has its own consequences. [AU]





	stay awake, for you do not know the day nor the hour

She wraps her hands tighter around the scalding ceramic, leans in closer to the heat of Harvey’s shoulder. The coffee shop door is loose, and creaks open at the slightest gust of wind. These autumn evenings are nothing but the freezing wind. Staring into the bubbly mix of whipped cream melting into the hot chocolate, the stray thought comes to her: _I didn’t even pack a scarf._

“Sabrina?”

She catches her friends exchanging a quick glance amongst each other when she finally looks up. There’s concern in their eyes, but the feeling of being left out, of three against one, rises sharply in her chest. Sabrina bites her lip. She’s chosen them, why is she feeling so paranoid? These are her friends and they will support her forever and ever.

“I’m fine,” she says, then breaks into a small laugh. “Well, okay, I’m fine, considering the circumstances! I’m just not sure what to do now.”

“Yeah,” Susie’s brow crinkles, “Do you know who you’re going to live with? Where are you going to go now?”

Roz and Susie stare at her, as if she has all the answers. Sabrina’s mouth goes dry.

Harvey laughs strained like a wind-up musical box and throws his arm around her shoulders. He’s warm and safe and the tension drains out of Sabrina as she leans in. She feels him speak: “Brina will stay with me, of course! She’ll always be welcome at my place.”

Sabrina smiles at the easy love in his voice.

Rox brightens up. “And I’m sure you can stay at my place some of the time – have to tell my parents that it’s just a sleepover, or else they’ll like call the authorities or whatever – but yeah! It’ll be great!”

Susie bites her lip. “What about paperwork? Or a job? Or Harvey’s dad?”

“It’ll be great,” Sabrina echoes. “I’ve got you guys, don’t I?”

The images flash through her mind: the fury shaking Zelda’s voice, Hilda covering her eyes with her hands, Ambrose turning away when she fled through the door.

The justifications flicker through her heart. She could not sign _le Livre de la B_ _ête_ , she could not give up her mortal life, she could not give up these friends. _Donc_ , she has ended up forsaking her witch life, fleeing into the day, running to Harvey. Just another mortal. Who knows more than she should.

Sabrina does not want to choose. She doesn’t want to be constrained. She doesn’t want to see the consequences. Sabrina wants her friends and she wants her aunts and Ambrose and she wants to live a life where she doesn’t lose anything.

Harvey kisses the top of her head, whispers, “I love you. I’ll never leave you.”

Everything else melts away as he tips up her chin so her eyes meet his – the endless brown warmth of them. Harvey murmurs to her, “Maybe I’ll just keep you forever.”

She closes the distance between them. Let the rest of the world burn. Sabrina will stay here, safe in his arms.

…

Sabrina did not think it would be up to her to have this conversation.

She can see him down by the stream, the sun glinting in his hair, waiting for her. There’s a basket hanging off his arm, work-sleeves pushed up, a rolled-up blanket clutched to his chest. Damn it. She’ll have to be quicker than ever. Starting it off happily, as if nothing is wrong, will only make it harder on him.

Her bag full of books is heavy on her shoulders as she tip-toes down the steep incline. She imagines making a loud noise, and Harvey turning, and nearly tumbling down the hill to throw herself into her arms. It remains just a fantasy. Harvey does not turn, humming to herself, and this is goodbye.

“Harvey?”

He turns to her grinning, which dims when he registers the tentativeness of her voice. “Is something wrong?”

Sabrina is not a coward or a liar, so she doesn’t deny it. There has been something wrong for a long time. She motions for them to sit down upon the prickly grass; Harvey points to the blanket; Sabrina shakes her head. She smooths down her skirt and sits.

“What’s this about?” His voice is worried. Sabrina can’t quite look at him. Even now, the thought of causing him pain is blood in her mouth. “Has your dissertation supervisor said anything to you? Is studying for your lawyer bar tests going bad or something?”

“No, no, none of that,” Sabrina sighs. There’s smears of dust and dirt on Harvey’s waterproof overalls. Her mouth tightens, resentment building, restraining the need to correct him on what ‘lawyer bar tests’ actually are.

“ _Ma ch_ _érie_ , you’re not looking at me.”

Sabrina looks up. Those warm brown eyes studying her only fill her with distaste. She bites back a cry for him to stop looking at her. She is not something for a mine worker to look at, she is not a jewel _cher_ to be kept in this tiny cage-town. She will not marry him. She wants more than what she has been promised.

“Harvey,” this is the last time, and she savours the taste of his name in her mouth, knowing a door is shutting. “Harvey, it’s over.”

His face crumples and Sabrina knows that she can never speak to Susie or Roz ever again.

…

There is a power imbalance in a twenty-year-old law student hanging out with a bunch of high-schoolers from across the river. Sabrina has heaved herself up on car roof, legs swinging in the air as she watches them laugh around the makeshift campfire, the heat of the flames warm on her bare skin. These kids can’t replace Susie and Roz, or even Harvey.

Sabrina is learning how to lose love and find it once more.

The textbook is a heavy weight upon her lap. She lost the life of a witch and so she gained a mortal life as a law student. It’s fine. She was an uneducated hedge-witch from the beginning. She never even knew the basics. Why regret the life she refused four years ago? Why regret the people she grew away from? Why sit here, wanting what she cannot have?

Why sit here and dream of power?

“Ah, Rapunzel!” Archie takes the cigarette from his mouth and mockingly calls to her. “Come down and join us! You look so lonely up there!”

Veronica raises a can of beer to give to her, and Betty laughs from where she’s snuggled in at Jughead’s side. They are good kids and she owes them nothing, so she slips off the roof and joins them.

Sabrina is welcome here, but she is free to leave whenever she likes. That is what she wants. A world without strings to bind her.

…

The kids are buried in a mass pit in the forest, far away from the river. The bodies are set on fire. Sabrina sinks to her muddy knees and prays to the Lord of Light that the dead remain dead.

Her books have long been forgotten. Her tailored clothes, her potions made from memorised childhood recipes, her letters from Harvey. All left behind in her flat as she ran for her life. It is those items she wants her. Sabrina needs back a copy of _le Livre de la Mort_. She thinks to herself of opening those pages and studying every Latin incantation, searching for a cure.

The flames spread higher and higher. They smell of burning pork and cloth. Sabrina has not eaten in days.

She tugs down her sleeves over her unmarked arms. Even if this is the end of the world, even if the dead will rise from the earth to eat the hearts of the living, Sabrina will stay true to herself. She will do only what she wants and she will not be corrupted by any evil.

She rises from the earth. She will go. The destination? Who knows. Sabrina has fled evil before without knowing where she would finally end up. She can do it again.

Anyway, she had been thinking of becoming a vegetarian.

…

The church is built inside an old Whole Foods. It takes her a few moments to realise. Overturned shelves serve as pews. A checkout counter for an altar. She hesitates at the door, kitchen knife firmly in hand. Who are the laymen to this church? What deity do they worship? The Lord who brought his people out of the darkness in Egypt to the light of the Holy Land? Or the Dark Lord who fell from heaven for loving none but himself?

“ _Salut_ ,” calls out a voice.

Sabrina whirls around, knife in hand.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He holds up piano-playing hands, which belong to a thin and pale man, with a faint smile. “This is a church, we don’t hurt anyone.”

“Depends on what kind of church you belong to.”

Sabrina remembers well _la F_ _ête de la F_ _ête:_ the blood running down arms, the reek of iron in the air, the knives scraping bone.

“There is only one church, mademoiselle. _Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam_.”

The priest is welcoming enough. They sit down among the empty shelves and eat thin bread, so hot it near burns her fingers. Just bread and water. It is a simple life here. The plants have not yet rotted away like the mammals have done; if Sabrina had ever been interested in herbology, she could have found happiness in tending to vegetable plots in the many last fortresses of human civilisation.

Sabrina is Sabrina and so she could never be content with such a normal life.

“I don’t believe in just one way,” she tells him, cupping the mug and watching the water slosh. “There’s more to life than just I’m right, everyone else is wrong. It can’t be that simple. Can’t we think for ourselves? Can’t we just do whatever we want? Why must we obey others? I want to live a life true to myself – myself! And no one else.”

The priest hums. Sabrina stills at her outburst. It has just been so long since she has had someone else to talk to. All these thoughts have wound themselves up and around inside her head. Eventually they have to come out.

Finally, the priest speaks. “We all have to choose. Between being a fox or being a hedgehog. Between serving ourselves or serving someone else. Between living a hard life or an easy one.”

Sabrina has no patience for riddles. “That doesn’t help.”

“I can tell you were never a theology student,” the priest says and laughs like a reed.

…

In the empty suburbs of the ransacked Greendale, the Dark Lord finds her once more.

Or more accurately: his mistress finds her.

“This is the hour of revealing,” says the dark lady, her navy eyes like the drowning sea. “Will you give yourself to the Dark Lord?”

Sabrina doesn’t even grace her with a response. She just turns and walks away. It’s deep in the thick of winter and her boots crunch on snow. Little flakes settle and melt into her golden hair. Greendale is long empty. It is a town devoid of life, devoid of humanity, devoid of anything human. Left only are the ruined buildings, as if they are waiting for their loved ones to return.

The boy she loved is not here.

What was she expecting?

“You can’t run forever,” Madam Satan calls out behind her. “There is no choice but him. He will find you and he will keep you, little girl.”

Sabrina cannot be kept by anyone.

So she turns, and throws the knife in her hand, with deadly accuracy –

…

Hellfire, scorching, making her gasp for air, choke, fall to her knees, vision going dark, skin peeling. Is this how the witches of old died? This death like fireworks, like all the ugly and fierce emotions she had kept trapped behind her ribcage has burst free and burnt the whole city alive.

There is a heavy claw slicing into her shoulder and she cries out at the pain.

You want freedom and power. You greedy little girl. You want more than what was promised to you.

Sabrina cannot stand up. He is behind her.

You have chosen free will and so you have chosen to be loyal to your own selfish interests. You have chosen yourself, which means that you have chosen to be alone.

“That’s fine,” she chokes out, swallowing for water that will not come. “That’s fine.”

Another choice remains open to you.

The choice always remains open to you.

You can choose me.

Or him.

If she closes her eyes tight enough, she can hear the low sound of her aunts arguing, Ambrose humming along to a song, Susie and Roz discussing a new plan, Harvey whispering _je t’a…_

“I choose myself,” Sabrina whispers, in her own mind or aloud. “I don’t want to be bound to anyone.”

…

When she wakes up, she is all alone.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I binge-watched this in French, so I am weirdly convinced that it all happened in rural France
> 
> 2) Finally, some time to write! I promise my muse has not disappeared - my time has.
> 
> 3) The show has amazing characters but needs more theological research x


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